Judith Hermann - Alice

Would you do that please Alice said.

Of course, he said. Gently, with an expression of unlimited patience. As if he had just wanted to give Alice a little time, a small span of time, so that she could reconsider everything. Change her mind, retreat. Alice thought, But that’s something I never learned to do. Sorry, that’s not possible any more. She didn’t smile, felt her left eyelid twitch; inconspicuously she withdrew her hand from the counter, leaving a damp mark that vanished as she watched. The clerk closed the ledger and put the pencil down next to it. He lifted the telephone receiver and, as if he were in a silent film, dialled a number and held the receiver out to her over the counter. Alice angrily rejected it, almost pushing away the hand extending the telephone to her, almost touching him.

Tell him Alice is here, she whispered. He raised his eyebrows, put the receiver to his good ear, and listened. No one there? Would someone have to break down the door? Did Frederick need a little more time so that he could change his mind about the whole thing? After all he’d had to learn to do without.

Alice knew that Frederick, sitting in the armchair next to the suddenly ringing telephone, must have flinched in shock. Even though he had been waiting for it to ring. Just because of that. The abrupt shock. His heart pounding, the theoretical acknowledgement of futility.

Alice is here, the clerk said. Almost pleading. He had been given the key word, knew the text. He nodded, listened some more, a pained half-smile on his lips. Then he replaced the receiver. Looking at Alice, looking right through her, he said, The gentleman is coming down to the lobby. Right away.

Alice didn’t know where to go. She was standing in front of the elevator, in the middle of the lobby, the reception desk to her right and the breakfast room to her left. Circling the elevator were the stairs, a cabaret stairway with wide steps, the banister rail of dark wood and golden diagonal posts. Would Frederick take the elevator or the stairs? Either way he’d be making an entrance. The elevator was waiting on the fourth floor; the digital display above the elevator door remained steadily on the number 4. The lobby floor was paved with black and white tiles, freshly washed, showing distinctly the tracks left by Alice’s shoes and her dripping umbrella. An old woman was pushing a cart full of wrinkled, soiled laundry past the reception desk down the long hall. Umbrellas swam by outside the windows; it seemed to be getting dark already. The hotel clerk yawned like a tired child. He undid the foil wrapper around a stick of chewing gum and pushed it into his mouth. Sucking on it thoughtfully. In the breakfast room the waitresses were crawling around on their hands and knees under the tables. They straightened tablecloths, flower arrangements, cinnamon sticks, and dried orange slices. They bumped their heads, pulled their braids tight with both hands.

Alice switched the bag from her right shoulder to the left, took the umbrella into her left hand. She thought of her grandmother who all her life had had a recurring dream in which she was in a large room, sitting at a festive table set only for her, in front of a tureen made of the finest porcelain. When she raised the lid, there in the white bowl was a black, multi-legged, unusually intricately equipped insect, stretching out and flicking up its shiny feelers. Tentacles. Tendrils like wire. In the autumn, Alice’s grandmother liked raking the leaves of the nut trees, leathery leaves, the smell of earth and oil. Every other year, there would be nuts, shrivelled and plentiful; they would lie spread out on newspapers by the window, and at noon the sun would shine for an hour on their shrivelled husks. Her grandmother had supported the first small sunflower stems with paint brushes, tying the stems to the brushes with thread. When she came downstairs to the kitchen after her midday nap, her bronze bracelet clattered on the banister. She believed in the nerve-strengthening power of bananas. In the evenings she played Napoleon patience and, despairing when it didn’t come out, would leaf through a French grammar book to compensate, rustling the yellowed pages until her eyes closed. Then she would feel for the switch inside the shade of the cast-iron lamp that had been her mother’s and her mother’s mother’s before that and afterwards had been Malte’s, and then again hers and now Alice’s. Alice’s grandmother had died in a hospital even though she had expressly asked to be allowed to die at home. In her last hour of life she had spoken steadily and insistently, but Alice hadn’t understood a single word because the nurses refused to put her grandmother’s teeth back in her mouth — saying she might have a convulsion and choke to death. That’s how it was. Then, later, Alice was handed a plastic bag containing her grandmother’s cardigan, a pair of shoes, and the bronze bracelet. She had turned down the offer to say goodbye to her one more time in the morgue the following day.

Her grandmother wouldn’t have said anything about the meeting between Alice and Frederick. Neither for nor against it, not the one nor the other. Alice thought that her grandmother, in her old age, had been a happy person in a humble way. Frederick came down the stairs. An old man. Very fine hair, white, almost gleaming, and Alice realised with amazement that she had actually assumed he would be young. As young as he had been almost forty years ago. She had assumed Frederick had stopped ageing when Malte died. That his story had stopped at the point where hers began. She made an almost apologetic movement towards him, and Frederick let go of the banister on the last step and came towards her, his gaze focused attentively on Alice’s face — and Alice knew that he would be disappointed at finding no external resemblance between her and Malte, not the least. On the other hand it was no longer possible to know what Frederick had looked like back then. On the porch. Light, shadow, and light, alternating on his features. But despite all that, they looked at each other. Shook hands and their touching was encouraging, it was what was left to them.

Well now, let’s go outside for a bit, Frederick said. He had a slight squint. Sounded indulgent, and he smiled that way too. Good thing you brought an umbrella, he said.

They walked together along the river. The voices of the tourist guides on the excursion boats floated across the water, fragmented and windblown, … once stood here, used to be, will be and is today . Frederick walked under the umbrella Alice held over him, every now and then sticking his face out into the rain. He was shorter than she was. They walked slowly. He was carrying a plastic bag with something in it. No coat over his blue suit. Alice thought he would dissolve if it weren’t for the umbrella she was holding over him. Dissolve and run like watercolours, different hues of blue: marine, hyacinth, hydrangea. An express train roared across the bridge. Pigeons flew up. Signals. Departure and arrival. The river water lapped against the bulwark, carrying trash, paper and bottles. Building cranes swayed next to the Tränenpalast. Frederick said, This time I’d like to go to the Bode Museum. Back then, he paused, it wasn’t possible. But I’m going there this afternoon. It was not an invitation for her to go with him.

They sat across from each other, the only customers in a dimly lit café, Alice drinking tea, Frederick too, no sugar, no milk. The waitress behind the counter was reading a book. At Frederick’s request she had turned off the radio. An ice crystal was rotating with psychedelic slowness on the computer screen of the cash register. Now and then Alice gazed at Frederick, his white, feathery light hair, his reflective glasses, his skin dark and meticulously shaved, an expression of weariness and arrogance around the mouth. Also a childish look of hurt feelings. He had a problem with swallowing. Coughed frequently. His hands looked soft, carefully cut fingernails and a signet ring showing a rising or a setting sun.